Jason Statham returns as Jonas Taylor, eco-warrior, deep sea diver and adoptive father in Meg 2 The Trench, a sequel to 2018 The Meg based on the book of the same name. Although it does borrow the title of the second book in the series, it distracts almost immediately from the source material and can’t decide what sort of movie it wants to be.
First off let me say, I never actually saw The Meg so this is from the perspective of a newcomer. I never actually felt lost in the plot as they do cover the basics pretty early on. Five years have passed since the first movie and Jonus now works for Mana One while also going James Bond on environmental crimes. He has adopted Meiying from the first movie and I did learn it is the same actress which does lend it some continuity. When a routine dive into the Marianus trench goes awry, they discover an illegal mining operation and in an attempt to cover it up accidentally release more prehistoric creatures from the isolated biome.
Basically, the plot is nonsense which is nothing new to these sorts of movies, but can often detract if the action is good or the writing masks it. However, there’s nothing here to save this.
Characters are poorly written and one-dimensional. If you took a list of the cast and their personalities you could pick which ones were going to die and who would survive. The plot also seems to forget that this movie was about the megs and focuses on a rivalry between JS and the bad guy who happens to have a grudge against him, and who also just happens to be involved in the drilling.
In fact, a lot of things just happen for no reason. It was no less than three unrelated coincidences that got the main plot moving before it hits a standstill. It’s only when the film remembers that it’s supposed to be about megs that it attempts to have some stakes and puts some holidaymakers at risk. Not nice holiday makers mind you as everyone they focused on seemed to be stuck up or narcissistic making me not care in the least about any of them.
There’s a whole lot of nothing in this. It attempts to be tense but falls flat, it attempts to be funny but is contrived, even the science is insultingly bad. I’m not questioning Jason’s status as a hard man but even he should have suffered swimming with no suit at 25,000 feet below! Especially since we literally saw someone just die from explosive decompression not five minutes before! Let’s not even mention the amount of people who should have suffered from the bends!
The cinematography is mostly good, just get used to the colour orange for most of the underwater scenes, but there are scenes where I couldn’t keep track of what was going on. One stand out was involving a helicopter and several creatures where I lost track of who was where and what was going on. Music was your usual mix of current tracks but nothing memorable.
There was an attempt to make a movie here, the pieces are all here but the assembly was not done correctly. It’s not offensive, it’s just dull and I don’t think even getting some friends and some beers could save this.
Director: Ben Wheatley
Distributed by: Warner Bros.
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